Unless that evil Phillies Phanatic finds a way to spike the Rays' water cooler with something from the Amy Winehouse stash of mind-twisting substances, it's my bet that our awesomely young ball club will soon bring St. Petersburg its greatest honor: a Major League Baseball world championship. Which ain't too shabby for a team that finished at the bottom last year — or for a city dismissed for decades as God's Waiting Room.
On each night the Rays square off with the Phillies at the Trop, expect the 'Burg to be like a dozen fabulously scandalous First Fridays all rolled up into one. Inside the dome, the thunder of ringing cowbells should bode well for what national baseball analysts have christened, perhaps a tad condescendingly, the Baby Rays, a team that even casual fans have gotta love — or at least have a crush on.
Joe Maddon is a superbly cool genius, a cool cat who enjoys fine wines and wears Hugo Boss frames. We don't have a prick on the roster, just a bunch of guys who play their asses off and then party righteously with copious amounts of champagne and beer after securing victory.
Yeah, there's just no other way for this Cinderella story to end without the one-time cellar dwellers emerging victorious. Witnessing a World Series game live alongside 40,000-plus fellow enthusiasts is a best-case scenario, but there are not enough tickets to accommodate all the, um, fair-weather fans. (Hey, don't shoot the messenger, folks; the Rays only averaged 22,000 fans per game during the regular season.)
This means most of us will have to settle for the next best thing: a sports bar.
Regular Bar Tab readers will recall the disastrous trip I made to the Dugout Tavern in Seminole Heights recently. The Tampa Bay Rays played the Chicago White Sox for their third playoff game ever — with a chance to sweep the five-game series — while the Bucs traded blocks and tackles during their fifth regular-season game against Denver, an out-of-conference opponent. Throughout my brief stay at The Dugout — the cigarette smoke in the low-ceiling room was too much for Buck and me to stomach — not a single person pulled himself away from the gridiron grind to check on the Rays, who were banished to the smallest screen in the joint.
My column about the experience, titled "Why Rays baseball strikes out in Tampa," drew numerous responses from Dugout die-hards. Most called for my head on a dipping platter, with the most vicious reading: "Wade, get the hell out of Tampa, and take your smug arrogance and faux intellectualism with you."
Thanks, Chris C. Thanks a lot.
My favorite, though, is the rambler accusing me of stopping by The Dugout, which doesn't even serve food, for free soup or something. "Hey, you yuppy, uppity, shit! I saw you sniffin' 'round and I thought you were just tryin' to bum some chow. The stools were taken and you and your 'Bubba' [Buck] set down at the table where the food goes. We all knew that was just wrong. Everybody could tell you were a stranger lookin' for somethin'. You just didn't smell right."
Yeah, we were looking for a good time, you redneck, a place where we could watch the Rays and maybe even discuss the finer points of baseball rather than being subjected to the near-constant barrage of meatheads screaming "Hit the moooooootherfuuuuuuuucker" every time Denver had the ball.
Some of The Dugout criticisms, though, were constructive. "Why the funk did you go to some smoky bar in a low-class section of town to judge the 'perceived interest' in what the Rays are accomplishing?" asked Earthman. "Don't ya think visiting Bar Louie, Chammps [both in Tampa's International Plaza] or Press Box [Tampa] would have made for a better representation of how cerebral your average sports-bar patron on a Sunday afternoon really is?!"
Others suggested I visit Ferg's, the sports bar in the shadow of the Trop that has made out like a bandit in recent weeks. I dropped by there after the Rays beat the Red Sox during the regular season in July. It was wild: rabid fans, hot wings, hot babes working the beer tubs. Good times.
Other Pinellas sports bars that I have been encouraged to visit: the neighborly Sports Bar and Grille in Seminole/St. Petersburg and the swank (by sports bar standards) Courtside Grille, the Matt Geiger-owned joint off Ulmerton Road in Feather Sound. The Original Hooters on Gulf to Bay Boulevard in Clearwater might be a fun setting for a Phillies-pummeling, considering many Phillies fans have been frequenting the place for years due to the spring training ties.
Back in Tampa, there's the iconic Press Box mentioned above and then personal faves like Prime Time on N. Dale Mabry and the new Wings Gone Wild in South Tampa, which recently won me over with the tastiest chicken morsels I've had in some time.
This column hits the street and Web on Wed., Oct. 22, same day as Game One, and I'm still undecided about where I should plop down to catch a game. Suggestions? Shoot me an e-mail at wade@cln.com.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2008.